Luke's Monkey Birthday

I've been looking forward to this post for a long time since I had soooooooo much fun with Luke's first birthday party. I'll confess that planning children's parties is one of the main reasons I wanted to have kids. ha!

We settled on a monkey theme for his first party and I think it turned out super cute. You can click here to see my original post about it and see the scrapbook pages I made afterward.

This was the invitation:

Since we were in the middle of moving and our house was a DISASTER we were able to have the party at the country club. It was super nice because I didn't have to worry about the mess :)

The banner that's hanging above the table says "Hooray For Luke" and I made it out of all different sock monkey fabrics. I thought that we'd be able to get it out on his birthday every year and then hang it up on other special days (first day of school, good grade on a test, etc., etc., etc.). I know that it will be cheesy when he gets older but I also think it will be a fun memory for him as well. Here are a couple of pictures of it while I was making it...

The monkey cupcakes I saw on a website and they were super easy... 3/4 of a large Nilla wafer for the mouth area and a Mini Nilla wafer cut in half for the ears. Then just red and black gel icing for the nostrils, eyes and mouth:

Misc decor:

Another shot of the table:

Along with the cupcakes, I made chocolate dipped bananas and a banana pudding trifle (we also had Kelly's cherry limeade punch - YUM!)

I had all of these yellow balloons but hadn't really planned out what I was going to use to hold them to the tables (probably because I spent the two days before the party in Houston chaperoning an 8th grade trip to NASA), and so kind of impromptu I used some bananas:

Monkey Munch party favors: The birthday boy sported a super cute Small Paul t-shirt (and apparently one shoe on and one shoe off... ha!)

Overall it was a FANTASTIC first birthday experience and even though I hate the thought of him growing up and turning two - I'm already looking forward to planning the party :) If he HAS to get older than I'm going to at least have fun doing his party!

Don't forget to visit Kelly's Korner and see everyone else's birthday party ideas!